The Race-Card Extends To Global Warming Skepticism

Former vice president Al Gore compared climate skeptics to apologists for old-time Bull Connor-style racism and urges that the appropriate response, in order to “win the conversation” on climate change, is to shame and shun them.

The former vice president [in an interview] recalled how society succeeded in marginalizing racists and said climate change skeptics must be defeated in the same manner.

“Secondly, back to this phrase ‘win the conversation,'” he continued. “There came a time when friends or people you work with or people you were in clubs with — you’re much younger than me so you didn’t have to go through this personally — but there came a time when racist comments would come up in the course of the conversation and in years past they were just natural. Then there came a time when people would say, ‘Hey, man why do you talk that way, I mean that is wrong. I don’t go for that so don’t talk that way around me. I just don’t believe that.’ That happened in millions of conversations and slowly the conversation was won.”

Hmm, “winning a conversation” with science skeptics by treating them as miscreants, caught in the act of justifying “gross and evil” attitudes. Where have we heard this strategy before? Ah yes….

When university professors teach that race, class, gender (the liberal/progressive “Trinity”) is the lens to look through at history, socio-economics, horticulture, climate, and the like… are you really surprised about the following?

….Hispanics (41 percent) and African-Americans (36 percent) were both twice as likely to reply that climate change will harm them directly; 18 percent of white Americans predicted climate repercussions will hurt them personally.

Within religious groups, members of three Caucasian religious sects — out of the eight religious affiliations the survey analyzed — were the least likely to be highly or somewhat concerned about climatic changes. And those who identified as white evangelical Christians were the least likely to worry about climate change: 64 percent were either “somewhat” or “very” unconcerned, and 18 percent were “very” concerned.

Jewish Americans (66 percent), Hispanic Catholics (61 percent) and black Protestants (50 percent) said they believe in climate change, as did 57 percent of Americans without religious ties. Ï Regarding the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, those surveyed were about as divided as Congress: 52 percent said they supported the project, and 37 opposed it. Nearly 6 out of 10 (57 percent), however, favored measures that limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants even if the policies ramped up prices.

Self-identified members of the tea party were highly unlikely to believe in climate change (23 percent), and a majority (53 percent) were skeptics. Roughly two-thirds of Democrats said they believe in climate change, and 22 percent of Republicans said they are climate believers, while 46 percent said they are skeptical.